The speaker was a wounded surgeon of the Royal Medical Corps. The writer had just finished an address in Weymouth, England. The date was Wednesday, January 30, 1918. The presiding officer of the evening was the mayor of the city. Following the address an hour was given to the asking and answering of questions under the direction of the chairman. It was during this time that the surgeon made his remarkable statement. The rum ration had been debated, and some apparently earnest temperance people had gone on record in favor of it. The writer finds absolutely nothing abroad to cause him to change his opinion that Sir Victor Horsley, Lord Roberts, and Lord Kitchener were correct in their opposition to the serving of rum as a ration to the soldiers. There was a time when a single hour of "Dutch courage" won a battle, and when a battle won a war; but that time is past forever. If we were to grant the desirability of the temporary effects resulting from the ration, we should be bound in the light of evidence produced to insist that the final results leave the soldier less able to resist disease, less competent to take care of himself if wounded. The argument that rum should be given to drown the sensibilities, to deaden the terror of men about to go over the top, is not valid. Rum enough to accomplish this makes a soldier unfit to go over the top at all into the situations where every order must be obeyed promptly and where every faculty must be supremely alert. Principal Paton of the greatest public school of Manchester, England, said to the writer that at a certain aviation camp six young men were dashed to the ground and killed because, owing to the fact that they had taken liquor just before their flights, liquor to which they were unaccustomed, their machines in the higher altitude got out of control. [Illustration: DR. POLING WITH NEWTON WYLIE, OF THE TORONTO "GLOBE" Mr. Wylie was the executive secretary of the prohibition campaign in Great Britain.] I have found it quite difficult to show any tolerance at all for the opinions of certain public men of Great Britain, clergymen included, who have asked for the wet canteen in the training-camps set aside for boys of eighteen. The effect of the rum ration upon the teetotaler should have more attention than it has yet received. The son of a personal friend of mine wrote home to England that it was impossible for him to secure water for several days while in the trenches, and that the tea supplied him had the rum put into it before it was served. _This lad had never tasted liquor before he left home._ In that very remarkable book, "Letters from Flanders," written by Second Lieutenant A. D. (Bey) Gillespie, who died at the head of his troops on September 25, 1915, I find the following: